Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

But only an hour later, she’d awakened to muffled, familiar sounds of anger, from downstairs. Chest tight with apprehension, she crept downstairs.

It had never been this bad. Aidan sat on the kitchen floor, back against the refrigerator, his face bloody from the nose down. He was trying to stem the tide of a bleeding, broken nose, and his eyebrow was split. Her father was on his heels next to him, a handful of bloody hair in his fist, his face alien with anger.

He spoke close to Aidan’s ear. Then he let go and stood.

With painful difficulty, Aidan got to his feet as well, and spit blood and saliva into his father’s face.

Marlinchen felt a surge of raw fear at what would happen next, but her father only wiped his face and walked away.

Marlinchen stumbled back into the darkness when her father passed by, and he never saw her. For a moment, she sat with her arms wrapped around her knees in the darkness and fought back tears. From her low vantage point, she saw something she hadn’t before. She looked into the forest of chair legs under the small breakfast table and saw shining eyes staring back at her. Donal. He was five years old. His face was blank with shock.

Immediately, she knew what had happened. Donal had sneaked downstairs for something he wasn’t supposed to have, probably a piece of the lemon cake Marlinchen had made earlier. He’d hidden under the table when he’d thought he was going to be caught. He’d been under there the whole time. She didn’t know what had sparked her father’s rage at Aidan, but she knew Donal had seen everything.

It was at that moment that Marlinchen made her decision.

It was for the best that Aidan was leaving in the morning, that he lived a thousand miles away. Otherwise, things would only deteriorate. The younger boys would witness things like this, and worse, and God knew Aidan wouldn’t be safe here, either. In Georgia he would. No matter what Pete Benjamin was like, he was better than this.

She came out from her hiding place, walked past Aidan, who had slipped back down into a sitting position, trying to stem the bleeding from his nose, and went to Donal.

“It’s all right, baby,” she said, “come on out.” Even though he was too big to be lifted up by someone her size, she managed it. Donal was limp and acquiescent in her arms. Marlinchen had expected tears, but he didn’t cry.

The young are resilient, she decided as she tucked him into bed.

She did not go back downstairs to Aidan.

A Rainbow at Night was published later that year to reasonably good reviews, and Hugh did lectures and signings. When he was on the road, he sent back postcards from every city, even if he’d only spent one night in a hotel room there. The following year, a movie studio optioned The Channel. From the proceeds, Hugh bought a cabin near Tait Lake, a place where he could get away and write, but first he took the whole family up there for a vacation. His ulcer and even his back pain seemed to improve. He seemed more at ease, talking and sometimes laughing at the dinner table. Following his lead, the boys were a little more relaxed as well. It was as if a corner had been turned.

Marlinchen never mentioned Aidan to her father again.

“You were a child,”I whispered, “it wasn’t your fault.”

After telling her story, Marlinchen had dissolved into quiet sobs and recriminations. “If anything’s happened to him,” she said, “it’s my fault. I stood by and let it happen. I didn’t do anything.”

“There was nothing you could do,” I told her, patting her shaking shoulders awkwardly.

In time, she dried her tears and gathered her composure. “I wanted to tell you,” she said, her voice steadier. “But with something like this, the beatings… the first time it happens you look away and pray it’s just a onetime thing. After that, it’s like… if you didn’t mention it yesterday, it’s harder to think of mentioning it today, and even harder the next day, and finally you reach a point where everybody knows that everybody else knows, but to say it out loud would be like…”

“Like breaking all the windows,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Like breaking all the windows.”

“What about Colm and Liam? Did the three of you discuss what you’d say when I asked why Aidan was sent away?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t have to tell them not to say anything. We never talk about it, even with each other.” Her pupils were wide in the darkness. “Where do you think he is, Sarah? Really.”

“I just don’t know,” I admitted. “And it won’t help to sit up at night theorizing about it. Go back to bed.”

But she said, “When we were 11, and I was out walking on the ice of the lake… I forget why I was even doing that, but I fell through. I would have drowned if Aidan hadn’t seen and come out after me.” Her voice quivered as if tears threatened again. “We never told Dad what he’d done, so I wouldn’t get in trouble for being out on the lake. But when Aidan needed my help… if Aidan has-”

“Don’t think about it any more tonight,” I said. “Let’s both get some sleep.”

I doubtshe slept. I know I didn’t.

Marlinchen’s story wasn’t much of a surprise; I’d already started to suspect it. The problem was that there was a part of Aidan’s story that I still didn’t know, because Marlinchen herself didn’t know it: Why was Aidan, alone, the lightning rod for his father’s rage and resentment?

I supposed there was always the soap-opera answer. Aidan and Marlinchen were both blond, and in looks took after their lovely German mother. The other three boys looked like Hugh. The twins were the firstborn. Hugh and Elisabeth were two vertices of a literary love triangle. The third point, Campion, had been frozen out of his friend Hugh’s life several years after the twins were born. Conclusion: Campion was the twins’ father. Somehow Hugh found out a few years later and had a falling-out with his old friend. Then Hugh had taken his feelings out on Aidan, Campion’s bastard son. Now for a word from our sponsor, Oxydol.

Unfortunately, the paternity theory didn’t really answer the question, it just rephrased it. “Marli” had been a favorite of her father’s, particularly after the death of her mother. If the Campion theory were true, the taint of his parentage hadn’t stained her, just her twin. Marlinchen have I loved, Aidan have I hated. What was the rationale there?

It was these thoughts that kept me awake for a while, long enough to notice a sound outside Hugh’s window: the wind shaking the grapevines on the trellis. Which was strange, because I was sleeping with the curtains open, and the treetops that were visible outside weren’t moving at all.

I crept over to the window. The trellis shook again. Harder.

With nothing to change into, I’d been sleeping in my T-shirt and leggings. I yanked my hooded sweat jacket on, wishing for the shoes that were drying out in the Hennessy garage below, took my gun from my shoulder bag, and ran down the stairs.

The lean, shadowed figure was nearly up the vine-covered frame when I came around the side of the house. “Stop right there!” I shouted up at him. “I want you to climb back down, slowly, and when you get to the base of the trellis, stand facing it with your hands up on the frame and your feet about two feet back and spread apart.”

The figure- male and lean, that was all I could see on this moonless night- did as I instructed. In silhouette, I could just make out that long, loose hair was swaying as he descended. When he got to the bottom and laid his hands on the trellis frame at about the height of his head, I felt a little ripple of recognition go through me. Then the side of the house was flooded with electric light, removing all doubt.